He is pictured triumphantly brandishing a playing card
in his raised right hand whilst the others fan out in his shirt-sleeved
left. In his grinning mouth is clamped a cigar the size of a small town.
His eyes are flecked with pleasure, big moon face heavily jowelled and
hair, such as he now possesses, greying. He is Alfredo Campoli. Cigar
chomping, bridge and tennis playing Campoli recorded for Decca for over
forty years and his earliest Kreisler recordings date from 1931. In
addition to the performances on this new Decca reissue he recorded the
odd piece down the years with Sidney Crooke, Gerald Moore and organist
supreme Sidney Torch as well as Harold Pedlar, his 1931 accompanist.

To commemorate Fritz Kreisler’s 80th birthday
in 1955 Decca turned to Campoli and his accompanist of a decade, the
excellent Eric Gritton, to record an album of Kreisler favourites and
bon bons. The two fiddle players had first met in London but in 1952
when Campoli had undertaken his first American tour they met again and
over lunch discussed Campoli’s projected re-recording of the Paganini-Kreisler
first Violin Concerto – maybe they also discussed the composition of
a tribute album which, in the event, is fairly standard Kreisler fare.
Campoli’s Kreislerian aesthetic is, in general, sweet toned, reflective,
unassertive and affectionate. He prefers tempos bordering on the sedate,
seldom over inflates the melodic line with faux-sentimentality and largely
resists pouring rich tonal sauce where it’s unnecessary. He is fleet
when occasion demands it, technically adroit, tonally attractive and
frequently convincing stylistically. The Praeludium and Allegro opens
deliberately – precise articulation and bowing, with some unusually
slow passages and certainly not with the heart stopping climax that
some violinists make of it. Liebesleid – a typo has it as Liebeslied
as so often – is one of the most sheerly affectionate performances on
the disc and again slow. Gritton shows his musical mettle in Liebesfreud
in a performance of relaxation but some considerable and intelligently,
never mechanically, applied rubato. It’s good to have Campoli’s Polichinelle
Serenade, a piece frequently overlooked in recitals of this kind. Good
rubato again is a feature of Schon Rosmarin whilst Campoli disdains
to make the outrageous slide in Caprice Viennois as smeary and oily
as it can sometimes be – there is also some succulent playing here.

There is some tremendous bowing in Tambourin Chinois
though again the slow basic pulse is a distinctly Campolian feature-listen
to his silvered tone. The two Wieniawski-Kreisler Caprices are also
good to have, the E flat moderately paced and cleanly played and good,
the second fleet, with excellent passagework. Campoli’s effortless charm
is well deployed in the Kreisler Beethoven Rondino – this master of
light music knew exactly when to relax and push tempi. La Chasse is
an exceptionally difficult – Lionel Tertis, who admired Campoli enormously,
always said that his own viola recording of La Chasse was his favourite
disc – and Campoli certainly gets to grips with the bowing problems
though maybe this is not an optimally galvanizing performance. In La
Gitana we can hear the subtle tonal shadings Campoli employs, precisely
controlled never indiscriminately deployed and there is some big and
variegated tone here. The Granados Danse Espagnole is sweet rather than
sensuous – sensuality wasn’t much in Campoli’s armoury and Jacques Thibaud’s
brand of Granados playing was really not Campoli’s way – but we can
still admire Campoli’s discreet portamenti, nicely graded. The Tartini
begins bluffly and then erupts into some very quick playing with hints
of aggression at phrase endings. The final seven items come from a 1971
album with the Japanese pianist Norihko Wada. The acoustic is now much
more resonant and veiling. I admired the expressive playing in the Albeniz
Tango and the first of the Japanese pieces, Yamada’s Akatonbo, with
its episodes of skittishness and stateliness. Elsewhere in these well
known pieces Campoli is lyrical and affecting and whilst Wada is somewhat
recessed in the balance we can hear Campoli’s Arioso in all its unforced
eloquence, very much a quality I would attribute to his playing in general.

I admire Campoli enormously – his Elgar Concerto is
outstanding – and this Eloquence disc might almost have been named for
the violinist himself. There are other Kreisler discs more kinetic,
more brimful of personality, more quicksilver, more tonally resplendent
but few are more honestly and incomparably eloquent.

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